Notable Events Of The Nineteenth Century Part 6

He tried, and reported to me that there was no handkerchief in my staff.

"Then, Colonel, use your s.h.i.+rt."

"You see, General, that we all have on flannel s.h.i.+rts."

At last, I believe, we found a man who had a white s.h.i.+rt. He gave it to us, and I tore off the back and tail, and, tying this to a stick, Colonel Peyton went out toward the enemy's lines. I instructed him simply to say to General Sheridan that General Lee had written to me that a flag of truce had been sent from his and Grant's headquarters, and that he could act as he thought best on this information. In a few moments he came back with some one representing General Sheridan. This officer said:

"General Sheridan requested me to present his compliments to you, and to demand the unconditional surrender of your army."

"Major, you will please return my compliments to General Sheridan, and say that I will not surrender."

"But, General, he will annihilate you."

"I am perfectly well aware of my situation. I simply gave General Sheridan some information on which he may or may not desire to act."

He went back to his lines, and in a short time General Sheridan came forward on an immense horse, and attended by a very large staff. Just here an incident occurred that came near having a serious ending. As General Sheridan was approaching I noticed one of my sharpshooters drawing his rifle down upon him. I at once called to him: "Put down your gun, sir; this is a flag of truce." But he simply settled it to his shoulder and was drawing a bead on Sheridan, when I leaned forward and jerked his gun. He struggled with me, but I finally raised it. I then loosed it, and he started to aim again. I caught it again, when he turned his stern, white face, all broken with grief and streaming with tears, up to me, and said: "Well, General, then let him keep on his own side."

The fighting had continued up to this point. Indeed, after the flag of truce, a regiment of my men, who had been fighting their way through toward where we were, and who did not know of a flag of truce, fired into some of Sheridan's cavalry. This was speedily stopped, however. I showed General Sheridan General Lee's note, and he determined to await events. He dismounted, and I did the same. Then, for the first time, the men seemed to understand what it all meant, and then the poor fellows broke down. The men cried like children. Worn, starved and bleeding as they were, they would rather have died than have surrendered. At one word from me they would have hurled themselves on the enemy, and have cut their way through or have fallen to a man with their guns in their hands. But I could not permit it. The great drama had been played to its end. But men are seldom permitted to look upon such a scene as the one presented here. That these men should have wept at surrendering so unequal a fight, at being taken out of this constant carnage and storm, at being sent back to their families; that they should have wept at having their starved and wasted forms lifted out of the jaws of death and placed once more before their hearthstones, was an exhibition of fort.i.tude and patriotism that might set an example for all time.

SEDAN.

BY VICTOR HUGO.

The Second Empire of the French was pounded to powder in a bowl. This is literal, not figurative. To attempt to describe Sedan after Victor Hugo has described it for all mankind were a work futile and foolish.

To Hugo we concede the palm among all writers, ancient and modern, as a delineator of battle. His description of the battle of Waterloo will outlast the tumulus and the lion which French patriotism has reared on the square where the last of the Old Guard perished. His description, though not elaborate, is equally graphic and final. He was returning, in September, 1871, from his fourth exile. He had been in Belgium in banishment for about eighteen years. It is in the "History of a Crime"

that he tells the story. He says that he was re-entering France by the Luxembourg frontier, and had fallen asleep in the coach. Suddenly the jolt of the train coming to a standstill awoke him. One of the pa.s.sengers said: "What place is this?" Another answered "Sedan." With a shudder, Hugo looked around. He says that to his mind and vision, as he gazed out, the paradise was a tomb. Before subst.i.tuting his words for our own, we note only that nearly thirteen months had elapsed since Louis Napoleon and his 90,000 men had here been brayed in a mortar. Hugo's description of the scene and the event continues as follows:

The valley was circular and hollow, like the bottom of a crater; the winding river resembled a serpent; the hills high, ranged one behind the other, surrounded this mysterious spot like a triple line of inexorable walls; once there, there is no means of exit. It reminded me of the amphitheatres. An indescribable, disquieting vegetation, which seemed to be an extension of the Black Forest, overran all the heights, and lost itself in the horizon like a huge impenetrable snare; the sun shone, the birds sang, carters pa.s.sed by whistling; sheep, lambs and pigeons were scattered about; leaves quivered and rustled; the gra.s.s, a densely thick gra.s.s, was full of flowers. It was appalling.

I seemed to see waving over this valley the flas.h.i.+ng of the avenging angel's sword.

This word "Sedan" had been like a veil abruptly torn aside. The landscape had become suddenly filled with tragedy. Those shapeless eyes which the bark of trees delineates on the trunks were gazing--at what? At something terrible and lost to view.

In truth, that was the place! And at the moment when I was pa.s.sing by, thirteen months all but a few days had elapsed. That was the place where the monstrous enterprise of the second of December had burst asunder. A fearful s.h.i.+pwreck!

The gloomy pathways of Fate cannot be studied without profound anguish of heart.

On the thirty-first of August, 1870, an army was rea.s.sembled, and was, as it were, ma.s.sed together under the walls of Sedan, in a place called the Givonne Valley. This army was a French army--twenty-nine brigades, fifteen divisions, four army corps--90,000 men. This army was in this place without anyone being able to divine the reason; without order, without an object, scattered about--a species of heap of men thrown down there as though with the view of being seized by some huge hand.

This army either did not entertain, or appeared not to entertain, for the moment any immediate uneasiness. They knew, or at least they thought they knew, that the enemy was a long way off. On calculating the stages at four leagues daily, it was three days' march distant.

Nevertheless, toward evening the leaders took some wise strategic precautions; they protected the army, which rested in the rear on Sedan and the Meuse, by two battle fronts, one composed of the Seventh Corps, and extending from Floing to Givonne, the other composed of the Twelfth Corps, extending from Givonne to Bazeilles; a triangle of which the Meuse formed the hypothenuse. The Twelfth Corps, formed of the three divisions of Lacretelle, Lartigue and Wolff, ranged on the right, with the artillery between the brigades, formed a veritable barrier, having Bazeilles and Givonne at each end, and Digny in its centre; the two divisions of Pet.i.t and Lheritier ma.s.sed in the rear upon two lines supported this barrier. General Lebrun commanded the Twelfth Corps. The Seventh Corps, commanded by General Douay, only possessed two divisions--Dumont's division and Gilbert's division--and formed the other battle front, covering the army of Givonne to Floing on the side of Illy; this battle front was comparatively weak, too open on the side of Givonne, and only protected on the side of the Meuse by two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains, and by Guyomar's brigade, resting in squares on Floing. Within this triangle were encamped the Fifth Corps, commanded by General Wimpfen, and the First Corps, commanded by General Ducrot. Michel's cavalry division covered the First Corps on the side of Digny; the Fifth supported itself upon Sedan. Four divisions, each disposed upon two lines--the divisions of Lheritier, Grandchamp, Goze and Conseil-Dumenil--formed a sort of horseshoe, turned toward Sedan, and uniting the first battle front with the second. The cavalry division of Ameil and the brigade of Fontanges served as a reserve for these four divisions. The whole of the artillery was upon the two battle fronts. Two portions of the army were in confusion, one to the right of Sedan beyond Balan, the other to the left of Sedan, on this side of Iges. Beyond Balan were the division of Va.s.soigne and the brigade of Reboul, on this side of Iges were the two cavalry divisions of Margueritte and Bonnemains.

These arrangements indicated a profound feeling of security. In the first place, the Emperor Napoleon III. would not have come there if he had not been perfectly tranquil. This Givonne Valley is what Napoleon I. called a "wash-hand basin." There could not have been a more complete enclosure. An army is so much at home there that it is too much so; it runs the risk of no longer being able to get out. This disquieted some brave and prudent leaders, such as Wimpfen, but they were not listened to. If absolutely necessary, said the people of the imperial circle, they could always be sure of being able to reach Mezieres, and at the worst the Belgian frontier. Was it, however, needful to provide for such extreme eventualities? In certain cases foresight is almost an offence. They were all of one mind, therefore, to be at their ease.

If they had been uneasy they would have cut the bridges of the Meuse, but they did not even think of it. To what purpose? The enemy was a long way off. The Emperor, who evidently was well informed, affirmed it.

The army bivouacked somewhat in confusion, as we have said, and slept peaceably throughout this night of August 31, having, whatever might happen, or believing that they had, the retreat upon Mezieres open behind it. They disdained to take the most ordinary precautions, they made no cavalry reconnoissances, they did not even place outposts. A German military writer has stated this. Fourteen leagues at least separated them from the German army, three days' march; they did not exactly know where it was; they believed it scattered, possessing little unity, badly informed, led somewhat at random upon several points at once, incapable of a movement converging upon one single point, like Sedan; they believed that the Crown Prince of Saxony was marching on Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia was marching on Metz; they were ignorant of everything appertaining to this army, its leaders, its plan, its armament, its effective force. Was it still following the strategy of Gustavus Adolphus? Was it still following the tactics of Frederick II.? No one knew. They felt sure of being at Berlin in a few weeks. What nonsense! The Prussian army! They talked of this war as of a dream, and of this army as of a phantom....

The masterful description of the great novelist and poet then continues in a narrative of the attack and catastrophe:

Bazeilles takes fire, Givonne takes fire, Floing takes fire; the battle begins with a furnace. The whole horizon is aflame. The French camp is in this crater, stupefied, affrighted, starting up from sleeping--a funereal swarming. A circle of thunder surrounds the army.

They are encircled by annihilation. This mighty slaughter is carried on on all sides simultaneously. The French resist and they are terrible, having nothing left but despair. Our cannon, almost all old-fas.h.i.+oned and of short range, are at once dismounted by the fearful and exact aim of the Prussians. The density of the rain of sh.e.l.ls upon the valley is so great that "the earth is completely furrowed," says an eye-witness, "as though by a rake." How many cannon? Eleven hundred at least. Twelve German batteries upon La Moncelle alone; the Third and Fourth _Abtheilung_, an awe-striking artillery, upon the crests of Givonne, with the Second Horse Battery in reserve; opposite Digny ten Saxon and two Wurtemburg batteries; the curtain of trees of the wood to the north of Villers-Cernay masks the mounted _Abtheilung_, which is there with the third Heavy Artillery in reserve, and from the gloomy copse issues a formidable fire; the twenty-four pieces of the First Heavy Artillery are ranged in the glade skirting the road from La Moncelle to La Chapelle; the battery of the Royal Guard sets fire to the Garenne Wood; the sh.e.l.ls and the b.a.l.l.s riddle Suchy, Francheval, Fouro-Saint-Remy, and the valley between Heibes and Givonne; and the third and fourth rank of cannon extend without break of continuity as far as the Calvary of Illy, the extreme point of the horizon. The German soldiers, seated or lying before the batteries, watch the artillery at work. The French soldiers fall and die. Amongst the bodies which cover the plain there is one, the body of an officer, on which they will find, after the battle, a sealed note containing this order, signed Napoleon: "To-day, September 1, rest for the whole army."

The gallant Thirty-fifth of the Line almost entirely disappears under the overwhelming shower of sh.e.l.ls; the brave Marine Infantry holds at bay for a moment the Saxons, joined by the Bavarians, but outflanked on every side draws back; all the admirable cavalry of the Margueritte division hurled against the German infantry halts and sinks down midway, "annihilated," says the Prussian report, "by well-aimed and cool firing." This field of carnage has three outlets, all three barred: the Bouillon road by the Prussian Guard, the Carignan road by the Bavarians, the Mezieres road by the Wurtemburgers. The French have not thought of barricading the railway viaduct; three German battalions have occupied it during the night.

Two isolated houses on the Balan road could be made the pivot of a long resistance, but the Germans are there. The wood from Monvilliers to Bazeilles, but the French have been forestalled; they find the Bavarians cutting the underwood with their billhooks. The German army moves in one piece, in one absolute unity; the Crown Prince of Saxony is on the height of Mairy, whence he surveys the whole action; the command oscillates in the French army; at the beginning of the battle, at a quarter to six, MacMahon is wounded by the bursting of a sh.e.l.l; at seven o'clock Ducrot replaces him; at ten o'clock Wimpfen replaces Ducrot. Every instant the wall of fire is drawing closer in, the roll of the thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men!

Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At one o'clock all is lost! The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan!

But Sedan begins to burn, Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. The Third Zouaves, desperate, have set the example. Cut off from the rest of the army, they have forced a pa.s.sage and have reached Belgium. A flight of lions!

Suddenly, above the disaster, above the huge pile of dead and dying, above all this unfortunate heroism, appears disgrace. The white flag is hoisted.

BAZAINE AND METZ.

A letter of Count Von Moltke has recently been published, showing that the question of the conquest of France was under consideration by the Count and Bismarck as early as August of 1866. It is demonstrated that these two powerful spirits were already preparing, aye, had already prepared, to trip the Emperor Louis Napoleon, throwing him and his Empire into a common ruin. The letter also proves that the plan of the North-German Confederation, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Prussia, with German unity and a German Empire just beyond, was already clearly in mind by the far-sighted leaders who surrounded King William in 1866.

Count Von Moltke shows that it was possible and practicable _at that date_, and within a period of two or three weeks, to throw upon the French border so tremendous an army that resistance would be impossible. The antecedents of the Franco-Prussian War had been clearly thought out by the German masters at a time when Louis Napoleon was still tinkering with his quixotical Empire in Mexico.

When the war between France and Germany actually broke out, four years later. Germany was prepared, and France was unprepared for the conflict. Louis Napoleon did not know that Germany was prepared. He actually thought that he could break into the German borders, fight his way victoriously to the capital, make his headquarters in Berlin, and dictate a peace in the manner of his uncle. It was the most fallacious dream that a really astute man ever indulged in. From the first day of actual contact with the Germans, the dream of the Emperor began to be dissipated. Within five days (August 14-18, 1870,) three murderous battles were fought on French soil, the first at Courcelles, the next at Vionville, and the third at Gravelotte. In all of these the French fought bravely, and in all were defeated disastrously, with tremendous losses.

By these great victories, the Germans were able to separate the two divisions of the French army. The northern division, under command of the Emperor and MacMahon, began to recede toward Sedan, while the more powerful army, under Marshal Bazaine, numbering 173,000 men, was forced somewhat to the south, and pressed by the division of Prince Frederick Charles, until the French, in an evil day, entered the fortified town of Metz, and suffered themselves to be helplessly cooped up. There was perhaps never another great army so safely and hopelessly disposed of!

Metz, after Antwerp, is the strongest fortress in Europe. It is situated at the junction of the rivers Seille and Moselle. It is the capital of the province of Lorraine, destined to be lost by France and gained by Germany in the struggle that was now on. The place was of great historical importance. Here the Roman invaders had established themselves in the time of the conquest of Gaul. It was called by the conquerors, first Mediomatrica, and afterward Divodurum. Its importance, on the very crest of the watershed between the Teutonic and Gallic races, was noted in the early years of our era, and to the present day that importance continues for the same reason as of old.

Metz is on the line of a conflict of races which has not yet, after so many centuries, been finally decided.

The position is one of great strategic importance. But such were the military conditions at the end of August, 1870, that to occupy Metz with one of the greatest armies of modern times was the most serious disaster that could befall the French cause. Bazaine's army was needed, not in a fortified town, but _in the field_. It was a tremendous force. The army that Prince Frederick Charles locked up in Metz could have marched from Parthia to Spain against the resistance of the whole Roman Empire, at the high noon of that imperial power! It could have marched from end to end of the Southern Confederacy in the palmiest day of that Confederacy, and could not have been seriously impeded! And yet this tremendous force was pent up and shut in, as if under seal, while King William and the Crown Prince and Bismarck and Von Moltke hunted down the French Emperor and his remaining forces, brought them to bay, and compelled a surrender.

This was accomplished by the first of September. The Empire of Napoleon went to pieces. The Third Republic was inst.i.tuted. The Empress fled with the Prince Imperial to England, while her humbled lord was established by his captors at the castle of Wilhelmshohe.

Republican France found herself in possession of a political chaos which could hardly be stilled. She also found herself in possession of a splendid army of more than one hundred and seventy thousand men shut up helplessly in Metz. The situation was highly dramatic. The Republic said that Bazaine should break out, but the Marshal said that he could not. What he said was true. The Germans held him fast. But the Republic believed, as it still believes, that Bazaine, loyal to the fallen Emperor rather than to his country, wished to handle his army in such a manner as should compel the restoration of the Empire, under the auspices of the German conquerors.

This idea was hateful above all things to the French Republicans.

September wore away, and more than half of October; but still the siege of Metz was not concluded. Vainly did the new Republic of France strive to extricate herself. Vainly did she raise new armies. Vainly did she look for the escape of Bazaine. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of October, that commander surrendered Metz and his army to the Germans. It was the most tremendous capitulation known in history.

Never before was so powerful an army surrendered to an enemy. The actual number of French soldiers covered by the capitulation was fully one hundred and seventy thousand! The prostration of France was complete, and her humiliation extreme.

Bazaine became the Black Beast of the public imagination. A tribunal was organized at Paris, under the presidency of the Duc d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe--the same who with the Prince de Joinville had been on McClellan's staff during the peninsular campaign in our Civil War.

Before this court Bazaine was haled as a traitor to his country. He was tried, convicted and condemned to degradation and death. It was only by the most strenuous efforts in his behalf that a commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for twenty years was obtained.

The Marshal was accordingly incarcerated in a prison at Cannes, whither he was sent in December of 1873, and from which he effected his escape in the following August. He succeeded in making his way to Madrid, and took up his residence there. He sought a.s.siduously by writings and argument and appeal to reverse the judgment of his countrymen and of the world with regard to the justice of his sentence; but he could not succeed. It is probably true that the greatest surrender of military forces known in the history of the world was brought about by the preference of the commanding general of the conquered army for an Emperor who was already dethroned, as against a true devotion to his country. There was also in the case a measure of incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin.

Astronomical Vistas.

THE CENTURY OF ASTEROIDS.

The nineteenth century may be called the Age of the Asteroids. It was on _the first night_ of this century that the first asteroid was discovered! Through all the former ages, no man on the earth had had definite knowledge of the existence of such a body. It was reserved for Guiseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer at Palermo, to make known by actual observation the first member of the planetoid group. If human history had the slightest regard for the calendars of mankind--if the eternal verities depended in any measure on the almanac or the division of time into this age or that--we might look with wonder on the remarkable coincidence which made the discovery of the first asteroid to happen in the first evening twilight of the first day of the nineteenth century!